WARD, EDGAR EWELL

WARD, EDGAR EWELL (1893–1950). Edgar Ward, black physician and leader of interracial movements, son of Bettie and Jake Ward, was born in March 1893 in Dallas. His father was a prominent businessman. Edgar Ward graduated from Booker T. Washington High School in Dallas and received his medical training at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. He opened a private practice in El Paso in 1915 and transferred it to Dallas in 1920, the year he was elected medical director of the Excelsior Mutual Benefit Association. In 1933 he was elected medical director and a board member of the Excelsior Life Insurance Company. In 1943 Ward was elected president of the company and in 1948 retired from his medical practice to devote all his time to the insurance business. In addition to medicine and insurance he had real-estate investments throughout Dallas. In Dallas he took a great interest in interracial movements and set an example for others to follow. He served as the president of the Negro Chamber of Commerce and as one of the first "bronze mayors" of Dallas. He was appointed to a biracial committee by Mayor Woodall Rogers in 1943, headed the black division of the war bond campaign, and was declared the most outstanding Negro leader of Texas at the 1943 State Fair of Texas. He was subsequently responsible for many years for making the award. In addition to these honors he received the Sun Mutual and E. J. Crawford's Award for being "Dallas' Outstanding Citizen in 1946." At the time of his death he was president and owner of the Excelsior Life Insurance Company, a director of the Texas branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, and a trustee of the New Hope Baptist Church. Ward and his wife Pauline had no children. He died in Dallas on September 27, 1950, and was buried at Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in a service attended by Dallas leaders of all races, as well as friends from around the nation, including Thurgood Marshall, who came from New York to attend the service.